Famous Quotes

It's paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn't appeal to anyone.

~ Andy Rooney

The behavior of a human being in sexual matters is often a prototype for the whole of his other modes of reaction in life.

~ Sigmund Freud

The past can teach us, nurture us, but it cannot sustain us. The essence of life is change, and we must move ever forward or the soul will wither and die.

~ Susanna Kearsley

I've been embarrassing myself since about birth.

~ Phil Lester

I don't know how I look, but I know how I feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.

~ John Green

Life's a freaking mess. In fact, I'm going to tell Sarah we need to start a new philosophical movement: messessentialism instead of existentialism: For those who revel in the essential mess that is life. Because Gram's right, there's not one truth ever, just a bunch of stories, all going on at once, in our heads, in our hearts, all getting in the way of each other. It's all a beautiful calamitous mess. It's like the day Mr. James took us into the woods and cried triumphantly, That's it! That's it! to the dizzying cacophony of soloing instruments trying to make music together. That is it.

~ Jandy Nelson

That is the hardest thing of all. It is much harder to judge yourself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself, it's because you're truly a wise man.

~ Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Each new day is a blank page in the diary of your life. The secret of success is in turning that diary into the best story you possibly can.

~ Douglas Pagels

One of the tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

~ Dale Carnegie

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. (George Santayana)I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.

~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

A man must find time for himself. Time is what we spend our lives with. If we are not careful we find others spending it for us. . . . It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask of himself, 'Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?' . . . If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one's time—the stuff of life.

~ Carl Sandburg

I always knew, on some level, that I wouldn't live long. It's simply not written in my stars.

~ Marie Lu

You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won't be wiser?

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don't try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.

~ Lao Tzu

Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.

~ Orson Scott Card

I knew that in the silence that followed, that anything could happen here. It might be too late again. I might have missed my chance. But I would at least know I tried, that I took my heart and extended my hand, whatever the outcome.

~ Sarah Dessen

Everyone thinks that courage is about facing death without flinching. But almost anyone can do that. Almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream for as long as it takes to die. True courage is about facing life without flinching. I don't mean the times when the right path is hard, but glorious at the end. I'm talking about enduring the boredom, the messiness, and the inconvenience of doing what is right.

~ Robin Hobb

Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.

~ John Updike

It was a comet. The boy saw the comet and he felt as though his life had meaning. And when it went away, he waited his entire life for it to come back to him. It was more than just a comet because of what it brought to his life: direction, beauty, meaning. There are many who couldn't understand, and sometimes he walked among them. But even in his darkest hours, he knew in his heart that someday it would return to him, and his world would be whole again... And his belief in God and love and art would be re-awakened in his heart. The boy saw the comet and suddenly his life had meaning.

~ Lucas Scott

If fate doesn't make you laugh, you just don't get the joke.

~ Gregory David Roberts

To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funnybone.

~ Reba Mcentire

If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us.

~ Hermann Hesse

Dead people can be our heroes because they cant disappoint us later; they only improve over time, as we forget more and more about them.

~ Veronica Roth

Whether we like it or not, the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat.

~ José Saramago

Life is an adventure of passion, risk, danger, laughter, beauty, love; a burning curiosity to go with the action to see what it is all about, to go search for a pattern of meaning, to burn one's bridges because you're never going to go back anyway, and to live to the end.

~ Saul D. Alinsky

When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice.

~ Brené Brown

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.

~ Peter Stone

It’s always about timing. If it’s too soon, no one understands. If it’s too late, everyone’s forgotten.

~ Anna Wintour

But what is life if you don't live it?

~ James Patterson

Tristan was silent for a few moments, looking at the leaves before them. Life isn't about the past and the future. It's about today. He paused. It's about five minutes from now and two seconds ago. It's moments, you know? Not years. Years aren't what define us.

~ Chelsea Fine

Hurt is a part of life. To be honest, I think hurt is a part of happiness, that our definition of happiness has gotten very narrow lately, very nervous, a little afraid of this brawling, fabulous, unpredictable world.

~ Julian Gough

Whoever said that the past isn't dead had it backward. It's the future that's already dead, already played out.

~ Gayle Forman

To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it’s because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that’s where phrases like ‘deadly dull’ or ‘excruciatingly dull’ come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient, low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention. Admittedly, the whole thing’s pretty confusing, and hard to talk about abstractly…but surely something must lie behind not just Muzak in dull or tedious places any more but now also actual TV in waiting rooms, supermarkets’ checkouts, airport gates, SUVs’ backseats. Walkman, iPods, BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. This terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can’t think anyone really believes that today’s so-called ‘information society’ is just about information. Everyone knows it’s about something else, way down.

~ David Foster Wallace

Life did not stop, and one had to live.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Life is such a glorious trauma, is it not?

~ J.r. Ward

Dancers are the athletes of God.

~ Albert Einstein

Life is a funny thing. We only get so many years to live it, so we have to do everything we can to make sure those years are as full as they can be. We shouldn't waste time on things that might happen someday, or maybe even never.

~ Colleen Hoover

In magic - and in life - there is only the present moment, the now. You can't measure time the way you measure the distance between two points. 'Time' doesn't pass. We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we're always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better, about the consequences of our actions, and about why we didn't act as we should have. Or else we think about the future, about what we're going to do tomorrow, what precautions we should take, what dangers await us around the next corner, how to avoid what we don't want and how to get what we have always dreamed of.

~ Paulo Coelho